• Something Burger 🍔@jlai.lu
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    4 months ago

    Khaleesi, 6, a passport was denied — with officials telling her she needed Warner Brothers’ approval because it owns the name’s trademark.

    Typical capitalist brain rot.

    Shouldn’t they also use the same bullshit excuse when issuing an ID card? At least make the dumb rules consistent.

    • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 months ago

      By this logic, everyone named Mickey should be paying Disney a royalty…

      Wait shit retract delete delete DISNEY I DID JOT SAY ANYTHING DONT GET ANY FUCKING IDEAS NOW.

    • leftzero@lemmynsfw.com
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      4 months ago

      Aren’t they aware that the TV series is based on a book series…? If anyone owns the name it’d be George R.R. Martin…

    • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      The Passport Office reportedly later called Lucy to apologize for the error.

      They screwed up, and have admitted they screwed up. Did nobody read the article?

    • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Does the WB even own that trademark? You have to manually apply for each one. Also, trademarks are specific to commercial operations and two companies are allowed to share if they aren’t in the same business. I don’t think trademark laws even apply here.

    • anothermember@lemmy.zip
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      4 months ago

      Shouldn’t they also use the same bullshit excuse when issuing an ID card? At least make the dumb rules consistent.

      To be fair, ID cards aren’t common in the UK and passports are very common. This is quite probably the first time she’s applied for any form of ID. Not agreeing with it, just saying.

  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    The idiocy of naming your kid Khaleesi aside, the UK just decided that a corporation can own your name and prevent you from enjoying the rights of your citizenship.

    That’s pretty fucked.

    Edit - Apparently they did backtrack. But it’s still amazing that anyone even thought that was a thing.

    • MrJameGumb@lemmy.worldOP
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      4 months ago

      I’m pretty sure we’re going to keep hearing about people with Game of Thrones names a lot over the next few decades lol I know I’ve read a few articles saying that Arya and Khaleesi were the most popular girls names for a few years before the series ended

        • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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          4 months ago

          So is Christ, and therefore Christine and Christopher. Or Rex. Or Duke… Or Earl… Or Lady… Or Baron.

          Bishop.

          Pope.

          Smith.

          I’m sure there are more.

            • Jerkface@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              “Major Major had been born too late and too mediocre. Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three. Even among men lacking all distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was.”

          • Revan343@lemmy.ca
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            4 months ago

            Smith is a profession more than a title, and is also generally a surname. I’ll give you Christopher and Rex though

        • wjrii@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          At least Arya doesn’t go full speedrun genocidal maniac because the showrunners are bored and think they have Star Wars money coming.

          Never name your kid or your dog after a character until the who is over, folks! Cats? It’s fine.

          • Revan343@lemmy.ca
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            4 months ago

            I disagree, as cats are longer lived than dogs; wanna give your dog a stupid name, go for it

            This may or may not have anything to do with the fact that I have three cats and zero dogs

            • wjrii@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              LOL, it’s more that I’m less concerned finding out a cat is named after a woman who just wanted to watch the world burn, and I presume the cat would be too.

        • RedWeasel@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          At least Khaleesi sounds pretty normal still. I’ve heard about people naming their kids with names they basically made up so their kid’s is unique or really weird names otherwise. Unfortunately here in the states you’ll hear about some that have named their kid after Adolf and other worse choices.

              • MrJameGumb@lemmy.worldOP
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                4 months ago

                I used to work with a guy named Pelvis. I couldn’t bring myself to ask him where the name came from lol

              • Revan343@lemmy.ca
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                4 months ago

                Well with a dad with a name like Frank Zappa, you get what you get and hope for the best.

                Could be worse, kid could be named Khaleesi

              • edric@lemm.ee
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                4 months ago

                Zappa’s kids are fine since they’re children of a famous person (not to mention talented in their own right) and have the privilege of not having to live like a normal person with a weird name.

      • AmidFuror@fedia.io
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        4 months ago

        Within the US, “Arya” peaked for baby girls at rank 92 in 2019. 3050 girls or 0.166% of female births were given the name.

        “Khaleesi” peaked in 2018 at rank 550 and 0.030% of female births.

        I’m assuming other spellings were less common.

  • RubberDuck@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Why the f is a passport office concerned with a trademark. It is a name of a child… it does not infringe.

    • MrJameGumb@lemmy.worldOP
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      4 months ago

      Right? Like did she have to ask WB for permission to name her kid Khaleesi? Of course not! It’s a kid’s name not a spin off series lol

        • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
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          4 months ago

          Sure… Walter is a regular first name, and there’s lots of people with the last name Disney. It’s from “de Ysini”, and lots of people lived and live in the Ysini region. Company is from the French compagnie, from Latin companio, where we also get companion.

          So “Walter of Ysini, Friend” AKA “Walt Disney Company” is a perfectly legitimate name.

          As is Michael Mouse.

        • Stovetop@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          Excluding laws in certain places meant to protect children from a life of ridicule, you can name your child whatever you want.

          The issue of trademark, which is what this article highlights, only concerns applications where there is a business conflict. For example, it is normal for an actor/musician/artist to trademark their name as their “brand,” which means I can’t just form a thrash metal band called “Taylor Swift” to profit off of some confused music listeners. And even if my legal name was Taylor Swift, I could still be required to change my “stage name” to something else when promoting myself as an artist to avoid any confusion/conflict with Tay-Tay.

          Last I checked, Warner Bros is not in the passport industry, so this is a dumb argument that should never have occurred. If I had to guess, it was probably just some random disgruntled government employee who felt the need to play armchair activist and “punish” a parent because they didn’t like the name they chose for their child.

  • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    The Passport Office reportedly later called Lucy to apologize for the error. While officials said they’d now be able to process little Khaleesi’s passport, Lucy said she believes the problem was only solved because she complained on social media.

    Sounds like the passport office didn’t understand how trademark works.

    • GlenRambo@jlai.lu
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      4 months ago

      Doubt the “whole office” was even involved. More likely it was one incompetent employee. We’ve all been there. It depends on who answers your call as to what answer you get.

      • wjrii@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Yup. This is the boring but likely true response. You get the one Gareth/Dwight who remembers that memo about not using trademarks in marketing materials and decides they know how this all works and that the rights of Warner Brothers have to be respected before putting their intellectual property on a published document. “Just get the appropriate permission on corporate letterhead and notarized, and this will all be fine.”

        Social media is one way to fix it, but I tend to think a couple of layers of escalation would have worked as well, if a bit more slowly.

    • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      The government’s not real good about hiring the best pick for each position. Irregularly run into people who have no clue how to actually run their job, and there’s little to no consequences to f****** people’s lives up by doing it incorrectly.

      • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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        4 months ago

        That’s hardly specific to the government. A couple years ago, Hertz falsely reported 364 customers for grand theft auto. Some of them went to jail.

        • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          Most places I’ve worked had incompetent workers. Every state and government agency I’ve ever worked for was made primarily of incompetent workers

  • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    “I never thought you could trademark a name,” she added.

    I hope my son Marvel’s The Amazing Spider-Man is not going to get in trouble.

  • huquad@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    This is their fault for not checking the username db first. Should’ve tried xXx_khaleesi_xXx instead

  • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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    4 months ago

    the initial application to get her daughter, Khaleesi, 6, a passport was denied — with officials telling her she needed Warner Brothers’ approval because it owns the name’s trademark.

    This is a lot dumber than I thought. Yes, Khaleesi is a stupid name but it is their official name on government papers. They’re seriously telling her “your daughter can’t use her legal name without permission from Warner Brothers”?